Nov. 2012 courtesy photo of Antonio Fransion Jenkins. Jenkins, whose tattoo of a porcine police officer landed him in jail, got an 18-month stayed sentence Monday, June 17, 2013 because he is taking steps to obliterate the tattoo, but the judge gave him a lecture about it. The pig carries the badge number of a cop Jenkins claimed he had a beef with. In November, 2012 Jenkins, 21, of St. Louis Park, was charged with making terroristic threats by getting the tattoo and posting a photo of it on Facebook. Photo courtesy of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office.

A man charged for showing the world his new tattoo, which menaced a cop, pleaded guilty to making terroristic threats Monday and got probation.

But as Hennepin County District Judge Lyonel Norris accepted the plea and sentenced Antonio Jenkins Jr., he told the 21-year-old he needed to learn to control his impulses.

“Next time you want to get a tattoo, flowers would be nice,” the judge told the man nicknamed “Savage,” who police and prosecutors say is a member of the Bloods street gang.

Making note of Jenkins’ infant son in the courtroom, Norris told the defendant that others now rely on him.

“If you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of anyone else,” the judge said.

Prosecutors offered Jenkins a deal after he had parts of the tattoo obliterated with black ink.

“It’s basically a black spot now,” said Jenkins’ public defender, Cynthia McCollum. “It’s his intention to alter it more.”

Jenkins of Richfield was charged last November with a felony count of making a terroristic threat after a Hennepin County deputy spotted a photo of the man’s tattoo on Facebook — where it had gotten 18 “likes” — and notified Minneapolis police.

The tattoo on Jenkins’ left bicep depicted a person holding a handgun with the barrel in the mouth of a pig.

“The pig is wearing a police hat and uniform with a patch on the right shoulder with ‘Mpls. 8230’ and a nameplate with the name ‘J. Seidel’ under the patch,” the criminal complaint said. “Below the ‘J. Seidel’ were the words ‘F— the police.’ ”

When Jenkins posted the photo on Facebook, he added the caption, “My tattoo iz a pig get’n his brains blew out.”

Minneapolis officer Jeffrey Seidel had been involved in a gang-investigation team, the complaint said, and because Jenkins allegedly was an active gang member, the officer and prosecutors interpreted the tattoo as a serious threat.

At the time Jenkins was charged, he was on supervised release after serving time for a 2008 armed robbery. That sentence was up in January.

At the plea hearing, McCollum asked Jenkins about his animus towards the officer. It involved a case of mistaken identity. Jenkins had a beef with another policeman and thought his name was Seidel, so that was the name and badge number that he had a friend tattoo on his arm.

“You directed the intent to scare officer Seidel with this tattoo, correct?” his attorney asked him.

“This did cause officer Seidel and his family great concern and fear,” assistant Hennepin County attorney Michael Radmer told the judge.

Radmer said Seidel had told the county attorney’s office that he believed a 30-month sentence would be appropriate. The prosecutor said they had informed the officer of the plea agreement and hadn’t heard anything more from him.

McCollum told Norris that Jenkins regretted what he’d done. “It was a poor decision on his part, and he wants to move forward,” she said.

Those expressions came from Jenkins’ lawyer and not the defendant. Jenkins said little during the hearing except to answer questions asked by McCollum or Norris. The judge asked Jenkins if there was anything he wanted to say, and Jenkins declined.

Norris sentenced him to the 99 days he’d already spent in the workhouse, and stayed imposition for 18 months. If Jenkins completes probation without a violation, the felony will be reduced to a misdemeanor.

But the judge also told Jenkins he had trouble understanding why the man did what he did.

“There is very little reward for doing things like this,” he told the man. “There is almost no reward for creating antagonism with this police department.”

The judge set several conditions for Jenkins’ probation, including that he not commit any new crimes or have any contact with Seidel.

“There is an easy way for you to avoid officer Seidel, and that is a condition: remain law abiding,” the judge said.

“Mr. Jenkins, think,” Norris said, tapping his temple with his finger to emphasize the word “think.”

McCollum said that had the case gone to trial, Jenkins may have raised a First Amendment defense, arguing the tattoo was free speech protected by the Constitution.

It was a position Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman and some legal scholars disputed. When his office charged Jenkins, Freeman said the body art constituted a threat against a specific person. Jenkins also took steps to publicize the threat and allegedly had the ability to carry it out, Freeman said.

As part of the plea bargain, a misdemeanor drug charge of loitering with intent was dropped.

McCollum said that Jenkins regretted the tattoo almost as soon as he got it.

“The first time I talked to him in jail, he’d been talking to tattoo artists about taking it off,” she said.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in News

MONTREAT, N.C. (AP) — The Rev. Billy Graham, who transformed American religious life through his preaching and activism, becoming a counselor to presidents and the most widely heard Christian evangelist in history, died Wednesday. He was 99.

The Crosswinds school building in Woodbury could reopen as a science-focused magnet school with St. Paul Public Schools as its new owner. The St. Paul school board voted 5-2 on Tuesday night to buy the building from the state for $15.3 million. The deal closes Wednesday morning. The St. Paul district was a member of the cooperative that built Crosswinds...

It may have begun as a rumor, but now it’s officially a controversy. Members of the District 833 American Indian Parent Committee urged the South Washington County School Board last week to remove an Indian head mosaic at Park High School. The artwork was installed in 1965 in the east part of the main hallway near the school gym. They...

The parent group of Minnesota Public Radio is opening an innovation center — a testing lab and co-working space for startup ventures — in downtown St. Paul’s former Ecolab Tower on Wabasha Street. American Public Media plans to open the Glen Nelson Center in the recently renovated Osborn370 building this summer. Backed by philanthropic foundations, the center will invest in...

Sun Country Airlines is cutting 350 workers from its ground service operations at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The Eagan-based company told employees Tuesday it will contract those jobs out to Global Aviation Services Inc. Executives say the move will make Sun County more efficient. Layoffs begin immediately, with workers able to reapply for positions with Global Aviation as soon as...

The late Spiro Pina made Olympic history in 1994 when he became the first man to compete in luge for Greece. Pina, a native of St. Paul and a dual citizen of Greece and the U.S., returned to the Winter Olympics four years later, carrying the flag for Greece in Nagano, Japan. He placed 24th both years. Now his Olympic sled,...